Reviewing the German Name-Change Gazetteer is not without difficulty, as the book is written in German. Despite two years of German in high school, which needless to say was some years ago, I don’t profess to speaking German. Despite my inability to read the full details of the book, I can say its value, even to non-German readers, is potentially very high for those with German ancestors. Beyond the forward, the book is mostly a list of names anyway. Written by Otto Kredel and Franz Thierfelder, the actual title is Deutsch-fremdsprachiges (fremdsprachiges-deutsch) Ortsnamenverzeichnis, and comes as a two volume set.
The book was originally printed in 1931 and, reprinted as a softcover in 2005. This name-change gazetteer identifies virtually every town in pre-Word War I Germany and Austria-Hungary that was ceded to other countries or to new countries such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Thousands of towns are named in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Belgium-Holland, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Luxemburg, Soviet Union, and Switzerland. Also German names for selected towns in Albania, Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey.
For each country and area the names are provided in two listings, The old German name to the new name and the new name to the old German name. Being able to take names in countries as they mostly exist today and finding their older German names can prove vital to searching records from a time prior to the name change. That make this book valuable to finding location names in a major portion of the European continent.
Contents for both Volumes
Vormort
Südtirol und das ubrige Italien
Schweiz
Elfasz-Lothringen und das übrige Frankreich
Luxemburg
Eupen=Malmedy, das übrige Belgien und Holland
Nordschleswig und das übrige Danemark
Memelland und das übrige Litauen
Estland
Lettland
Sowjetunion
Die abgetretenen Gebiete Ostpreuszens, Westpreuszens, Polsens und Oberschlesiens und das übrige Polen
Tschechoslowakei
Ungarn
Sudslawien
Rumanien
Das übrige Europa: Albanien, Bulgarien, Finnland, Griechenland, Norwegen, Portugal, Spanien, Türkei
Order the two volume set of Deutsch-fremdsprachiges (fremdsprachiges-deutsch) Ortsnamenverzeichnis from Family Roots Publishing; Item #: AV257; Price: $87.22.